Toni Morrison's novel The Bluest Eye explores the darkest depths of human depravity in the face of cross-racial discrimination, class and gender. However, what makes Morrison's narrative unique is his desire to humanize seemingly "bad" or "morally corrupt" characters by tracing their dysfunctions to the hateful social environments to which they were victims. The character of Maureen, a light-skinned black girl, escapes Morrison's empathetic treatment and is presented one-dimensionally as a hypocrite who displays the social status acquired through her proximity to whiteness. In an interview, Morrison laments that she "didn't like [Maureen]" because she fit a stereotype in which "we all know who she is"; Maureen is an archetypal hypocrite who mitigates her subordinate position as a black woman by adopting the facade of a superior White woman (Naylor, 24-25). Black sociologist and activist Patricia H. Collins helps us understand Maureen's position as a member of a "matrix" of intersecting oppressions in which people are made superior or inferior based on their possession of positive and binary traits. negative, like being white on black, man on black. women and the rich rather than the poor (Collins, 274). Already disadvantaged by her inferior status as a black woman, Maureen represents a strategy for confronting the fundamental contradiction that social and structural injustices continue to thrive within America's promise of equality and freedom (Collins 23). Instead of allowing herself to be victimized by the intersecting oppressions she faces, Maureen hypocritically adopts the interpersonal, institutional, and hegemonic viewpoints of her white oppressors. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay Maureen, along with the black members of her community, each work together to perpetuate a system of domination by measuring themselves against the white male ideal of wealth. Under this racist and sexist ideal, blacks are defined primarily by their social differences and see themselves as incompatible counterparts “bound only by their definition of opposites” of whites (Collins, 70). For example, Maureen capitalizes on her socially advantaged light skin to distance herself from Frieda, Claudia, and Pecola by calling them “black and ugly” as opposed to her white “niceness” (Morrison, 73). The fact that Maureen herself is black illustrates how race provides a superficial and inappropriate basis for assessing one's self-worth. Indeed, Maureen is made ugly by non-racial beauty standards, for example by possessing a buck tooth and stumps where her sixth fingers have been removed. What makes her cute is not her actual possession of attractive physical features, but rather only the socially relegated superiority of light skin over ugly blackness. Collins explains that oppositional binaries like these are “inherently unstable.” That is, they must be continually enforced because advantaged groups desire to maintain their otherwise abstract advantaged positions (Collins, 71). Maureen represents the ultimate internalization of white superiority by assuming the identity of the oppressor and becoming the spokesperson for racial domination in daily relationships with other black people in her community. By asserting a coveted pseudo-white position, Maureen inadvertently strives to reproduce the interpersonal power relations thatencourage him to deny his heritage. Maureen's position as a student also reveals the complexity and degree to which racist hypocrisy pervades the structural power systems of institutions such as schools. Morrison details that "when teachers called on [Maureen], they smiled encouragingly at her," sponsoring her "whiteness" from a position of authority that influences impressionable black youth (Morrison, 62). Teacher approval insinuates Maureen even deeper into a social position of acceptance, polarizing most of the students between devotees of Maureen (and by extension, whites) and a handful of few blacks who resisted her hypocrisy (namely Frieda and Claudia). In this way, the racial views of teachers and the institutional powers they represent foster "group commonalities that encourage the formation of a collective, group-based point of view" based on shared interaction with racist issues ( Collins, 24). The teachers help place Maureen higher in the social hierarchy, much to the benefit of envious blacks with darker skin. Morrison explains Maureen's social position in detail when she describes that “black boys didn't trip her in the hallways; white boys didn't stone her, white girls didn't suck their teeth when assigned their work partner; black girls moved aside…” (Morrison, 62 years old). In this network, Maureen's "whiteness" makes her status almost equal to that of a white girl and higher than that of a black girl, while black boys will not discriminate against her as a girl and white boys will not. will not discriminate against her for being black. As a black girl, Maureen represents “a position by which the bottom half of a series of binaries converge” to occupy the lowest position in the social hierarchy. However, her institutionalized approval as pseudo-white allows her to occupy a higher place in her school's racial and gender network (Collins, 72). In addition to her interpersonal and institutionalized position within the social hierarchy, Maureen comes to represent a hegemonic archetype by reinforcing the implicit idea that if black people became whiter, they would be better off in society (i.e. i.e. they would face less discrimination, have more power, etc.). Morrison does not provide Maureen with a backstory that allows us to better understand why she is so quick to subordinate her fellow blacks, nor is this point as important as the archetypal role she fulfills as a character. “We knew that Maureen Peal was not the enemy,” Morrison explains through Claudia’s voice, “the thing to fear was the one who made her beautiful, not us” (Morrison, 74). This “thing” is probably the inescapable hegemonic attitude of white superiority and black inferiority, pervasive in areas such as cinema, school teaching, political ideology and culture (Collins, 284). Omnipresent in society, this almost unconscious racism becomes impossible to identify as being the cause of a single person or any influence. Therefore, black social consciousness perpetuates racism simply through the idea that racism cannot be easily identified and therefore considered harmful. Only Frieda and Claudia feel overt hatred for Maureen's hypocritical betrayal of her black heritage, and instead of identifying the real reason they find her troubling, they look for superficial flaws in her name and body. In the end, Maureen, 2004. 24-25.